The articles and essays in this blog range from the short to the long. Many of the posts are also introductory (i.e., educational) in nature; though, even when introductory, they still include additional commentary. Older material (dating back mainly to 2005) is being added to this blog over time.

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

A Reductionist Analysis of Reductionism?

It
can be seen that reductionism and essentialism aren't only scientific
and philosophical obsessions - they're actually human
obsessions.

People
naturally reduce and analyse things. They seek out essences even if there
are no essences to seek. Indeed the use of stereotypes and
generalisations - in all walks of life - is often a result of this way of
thinking. And the thing is - it's not always wrong or suspect. Sometimes
there are generalisations which contain a lot of truth - if not the
whole true. Stereotypes capture elements of truth – if not the
whole truth. And almost everything can be reduced down to more basic
elements; whether material things or problems.

Perhaps
physicists and philosophers are indeed the worst offenders, however.
As John Horgan puts it:

“They
want to show that the complicated things of the world are really just
manifestations of one thing. An essence. A force. A loop of energy
wriggling in a 10-dimensional hyperspace.”

Then,
ironically, Horgan says that the arch-reductionist - a sociobiologist
- may himself argue that

“a
genetic influence lurks behind this reductionist impulse, since it
has motivated thinkers since the dawn of civilisation. God, after
all, was conceived by the same impulse”(60).

Here
a (possible) sociobiologist is giving a reductionist account of the
reductionist impulse itself. In other words, just as a sociobiologist
may boil many - or even all - (biological) things down to genes; so he may also
boil the reductionist impulse (or even instinct) itself down to
genes. Thus sociobiological reductionism is applied to sociobiological reductionism - as indeed it
must be (if you think about it).

So
it's ironic that reductionism - which is the enemy of so many
religious people - should itself be seen (by some) as a result of a
religious impulse.

As
I said about generalisations and stereotypes, many reductions may be
largely correct. Still, they could/can never be the whole story; though
even this could be deemed a generalisation! It depends, first of all,
on what's being reduced. It also depends on what, exactly, is being
said about what's being reduced and what it's being reduced to. In
the end, the sociobiological claim may not be as monumental and
all-encompassing as one first imagines. It's often people's gut reactions
to some kinds of reductionism that overstretches things rather than
the reductionist himself – or reductionist science – who/that
overstretches things.

In
the end, most people are happy with some – or even many -
reductions. This is primarily the case because many reductions don't seem to have any direct impact on
human beings as such; either philosophically, morally/religiously or
politically.

Earlier John Horgan
mentioned that God was “conceived by the same impulse”
which drives reductionism. Later he says that “[m]ost of
Einstein's contemporaries saw his efforts to unify physics as a
product of his dotage and quasi-religious tendencies” (60).
However, perhaps I'm cheating here because that “dotage” was
about scientific unification, not scientific reduction.
Though unification and reduction often - or always - walk hand in
hand.

For
example, Horgan cites Einstein's own case in which he “spent his
later years trying to find a theory that would unify quantum
mechanics with his theory of gravity, general relativity” (60).
This appears to be an endeavour in unification which, at the same
time, would have required reductive work. After all, when you get down to
the basics (or when you reduce things to quantum mechanics), then
that's when you see that things are unified. The unification would come
from the reduction of the separate elements. However, it can be said
that quantum mechanics is in itself a reduction in that in order to
get there (as it were), objects would have had to have been reduced
to matter and forces; matter and forces to molecules and forces;
molecules to atoms; and then atoms to sub-atomic particles.... and
what have you. Knowledge of gravity and even general relativity is
also the natural result of reductive work in physics and cosmology...

So
what about a sociobiologist reducing love down to genes or at least
to some other lower (biological) level?....